30 years after Dayton – lessons for today

Thirty years ago, on Dec. 14, 1995, the presidents of Bosnia, Croatia, and Serbia gathered in Paris to sign the US-brokered Dayton Peace Agreement, ending a war that killed 100,000 people and displaced two million more. The deal, hammered out over three weeks at an Ohio Air Force base, stopped the bloodshed.

Now, as the Trump administration searches for ways to end the Russia-Ukraine war, Dayton keeps surfacing as a model – proof that American muscle, backed by force, can end impossible conflicts.

The comparison is tempting. Both wars feature territorial conquest, ethnic grievances, great power politics, and horrific civilian casualties.

Look closer, though. Dayton offers less a roadmap than a warning.

Yes, it stopped the killing. It also legitimized ethnic cleansing, rewarded aggression, and created a state generally considered to be dysfunctional because of the complex, ethnically divided political system it imposed.

This is no model for Ukraine.

What actually happened at Dayton

American diplomacy under Richard Holbrooke certainly mattered, but the deal worked because of what came before it: Operation Deliberate Force, a NATO bombing campaign that pummeled Bosnian Serb positions for two weeks in 1995. Combined with a Croatian-Bosnian ground offensive, the bombing changed the balance of power.

The Bosnian Serbs came to Dayton not out of goodwill but out of weakness.

The negotiations happened in isolation at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and were controlled by Holbrook’s team.  For 21 days, the parties were kept from the media, separated from advisors, and subjected to relentless American pressure.

The result split Bosnia into two entities: a Bosniak-Croat Federation and Republika Srpska for Bosnian Serbs, with a weak central government presiding over both.

Bosnia – the victim – made the biggest concessions. Before the war, Bosnian Serbs controlled about a third of the country. Dayton gave them 49 percent. The agreement essentially ratified ethnic cleansing, creating an entity built on mass atrocities, including the Srebrenica genocide just months earlier.

Serbia’s president, Slobodan Milošević, was a regional strongman – he eventually ended up at The Hague. Russian President Vladimir Putin leads a nuclear power with a UN Security Council veto, global energy leverage, and considerable backing from international allies and friends. The gap in power and immunity is enormous.

Serbia in 1995 was exhausted by war and sanctions, its economy shattered, its military overstretched. Russia in 2025 has vast resources, 144 million people, and despite sanctions, Russia sustains its war through partnerships with China, Iran, and North Korea.

The West’s decisive military intervention isn’t there either. Dayton worked because NATO bombing and ground offensives had weakened the Bosnian Serbs. They’d lost territory and faced more losses. Ukraine today, despite remarkable resistance, doesn’t yet hold a comparable advantage.

Russia controls roughly 18 percent of Ukrainian territory. Ukraine can defend itself and conduct counteroffensives, but given the restraint and hesitation displayed by its supporters, declared or real, it lacks the superiority to force Russia to accept unfavorable terms.

Although Ukraine’s forces have recently taken their defensive fight deep into Russia by hitting strategic targets, there’s been no Operation Deliberate Force – no sustained Western campaign degrading Russian capabilities to the point of imminent defeat.

Dayton’s lesson isn’t that negotiations alone end wars. Negotiations formalize military realities when one side has been sufficiently weakened, when the cost of continuing to fight becomes too great.

Scale matters too. Bosnia has fewer than four million people. Ukraine is Europe’s largest country by area, with a pre-war population exceeding 40 million. A Dayton-style partition would displace millions more Ukrainians than have already been uprooted.

President Volodymyr Zelensky can’t accept major territorial concessions without being branded a traitor. Ukrainian national identity has been re-forged by this war – surrendering land and conceding elements of cultural and historical selfhood to Russia is anathema to most Ukrainians.

International legitimacy is at stake. Accepting Russian annexations would represent the biggest violation of the post-1945 international order since Iraq invaded Kuwait. It would establish that nuclear powers can seize neighbors’ territory through force and have those conquests legitimized.

What message does this send to other authoritarian regimes eyeing neighbors? The principle that borders can’t be changed by force has anchored the international order for 80 years. Dayton, however well-intentioned by its architects, bent this principle – applying it to Ukraine would break it entirely.

Then there’s implementation. Even with Dayton’s robust mechanisms, international commitment weakened as attention shifted elsewhere. Who would guarantee Ukraine’s security long-term?  Western attention spans are short. Domestic politics make long-term commitments difficult.

The Uncomfortable Truth

Three decades of peace in Bosnia. That’s certainly significant, but look at what it cost. Bosnia today isn’t a triumph of diplomacy. It’s a monument to what happens when you prioritize temporary expediency and deals imposed from above over principles and justice.

Ukraine has earned something better. Its people didn’t ask for this war. They’ve fought it, at staggering cost. Now, some, including those who claim they are friends, want to force them into a settlement that resembles a capitulation.

Ukraine needs the support that will give it military leverage at the table. Security guarantees that actually mean something. Long-term commitment. The backing of a united alliance of democratic states, prepared to integrate it as a proven, valuable asset rather than a problematic liability.